This invention relates to food products and more particularly to the coloring of such food products to obtain a meaty-red color.
Food colorant agents for meats, whether they be for human or pet foods, are generally formulated to give the appearance of real meat in both color and texture. Use of the pigments produced by the growth of the mold Monascus purpureus on material selected from rice and corn has been taught for use as food coloring when added to food products by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,911,141, 4,031,250, and 4,145,254 and others. Such treated rice or corn is generally subdivided and used per se as the coloring material. The corn or rice thereby serves both as a nutrient source as well as a colorant in the food.
To date there have been no teaching that molds of the genus Monascus, such as Monascus purpureus could be successfully cultivated on an oat substrate and thereby take advantage of oats' excellent nutritive and other helpful qualities. The oat groat is unique in structure, composition, processing, organoleptic properties, and nutritive values; because of such uniqueness, experiences with other grains may not be easily transferred to oat. For instance, the gum content of oat is greatly in excess of that of other grains. Oat starch is regarded as markedly different from wheat and corn starch, probably due to the more branched structure of oat starch, as well as its occurrence as compound granules. In addition the lipid content of oats is the highest of all grains, as well having the highest level of lipase and protein of any of the cereal grains. Other differences, such as those engendered by the different milling procedure for oats, are in abundance. These differences, when viewed in the aggregate, result in a grain by which the uses and generalizations applicable to the other grains may not be applied. For instance, other grains such as wheat and rice and corn generally have no difficulty in storage of the whole grain. However, whole grain oats are stored only with great difficulty having problems with rancidity and the like. In addition, it is known that whole oat groats will not support the uniform and efficient growth of molds of the genus Monascus in any known medium in the same manner as will other grains, such as rice and corn. Because of this different status accorded oats, there have been no successful attempts to cultivate molds of the genus Monascus on oats, even though rice or corn have been used successfully as substrates.